The Denver Nuggets have officially etched their name into NBA history with their 94-89 Game 5 victory over the Miami Heat, on June 12, 2023. Nikola Jokic found himself holding up the Finals MVP trophy after putting up an impressive 28-point and 16-rebound split. Despite a glorious fight by the underdog 8 seed Miami Heat, led by Jimmy Butler, the Nuggets seemed to steamroll their way to their first ever Larry O'Brien trophy.
Game 5 went down to the wire, as Jimmy Butler would make score 13 points straight late in the game to lead 89-88 late into the game. However, after Nuggets player Bruce Brown hit a put back shot to lead once again, Jimmy Butler missed a three to turn the ball over, giving the Nuggets 27.4 seconds to prepare for their celebration and end the game. They would hit 4 free throws to put the championship series to rest. The back and forth play of the end of the game was classic Finals play to anyone watching.
"Those last three or four minutes felt like a scene out of a movie," Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said, as reported by Yahoo! Sports. "Two teams in the center of the ring throwing haymaker after haymaker, and it's not necessarily shot-making. It's the efforts. Guys were staggering around because both teams were playing so hard. That's what this league should be about. There's no regrets on our end. Sometimes you get beat, and Denver was the better team in this series. I don't know how long it would take me to go through the autopsy of this final game, but it will probably rank as our hardest, competitive, most active defensive game of the season, and it still fell short."
The Denver Nuggets didn't cheat their way to get here, in fact, they could be considered the most patient team in the NBA. The franchise is regarded to have never chased for stars, but it grew up its foundation at the source. Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, and Michael Porter Jr. were all drafted by the organization, and important contributors like Aaron Gordon and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope came through trades and signings. To add to this patience, Murray and Porter Jr. both found themselves battling injuries the past two seasons, with many NBA fans wondering where the team would be if Jokic had his stars on the side.
Josh Kroneke, the Nuggets' president, commented on the homegrown state of the team, stating, "We came about this very organically and we grew this thing from scratch. So I always said when we are here, we want to be here to stay for a little while and be in the conversation ... but I think this team is going to be in the championship conversation for quite some time."
Murray found himself reaching major redemption within this series, proving himself to be a high playoff performer. ESPN writes, "Murray made only 6 of 15 shots and had 14 points, eight assists and eight rebounds. But he opened the fourth quarter assisting Jokic on a basket inside before burying a 3. He found Jokic again for another score inside before hitting a pull-up jumper." Murray also helped elevate the Nuggets in Game 3 with a 34-point performance and shooting 50% from three.
As his newly coveted Finals MVP now states, however, Nikola Jokic was far and away the biggest story in the 2023 NBA Finals. In Game 5, he shot 12-for-16, and seemed virtually unstoppable. Earlier in the series, Jokic put up an unprecedented 30-20-10 stat line in Game 3 with 32 points, 21 rebounds, and 10 assists, which has never been done in the Finals. Besides the Finals, Jokic's mastery went throughout the postseason. He had become the "first player to lead all players in points (600), rebounds (279) and assists (190) in a single postseason," according to ESPN. He also was averaging a triple-double in the postseason up until the Finals, and had 10 total triple doubles during the playoffs.
Jokic became the lowest-drafted player to ever win the Finals MVP, having been drafted 41st overall in 2014. He is also the third second-round player in NBA history to win Finals MVP, alongside Willis Reed and Dennis Johnson. He is now the sixth international player to win the award, after Hakeem Olajuwon, Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Dirk Nowitzki, and Giannis Antetokounmpo.
"I know how great Jokic is,"LeBron James stated, after losing to the Nuggets in 4 games in the Conference Finals. "There are certain guys in this league that play the game a certain way, a certain way that I like to play the game as well, and he's one of them where you are always off-balance when you are guarding a player like that because of his ability to score, rebound, shoot. He sees plays before they happen. There's not many guys in our league like that."
On the basis of winning the title, all Jokic had to say was: "It's good. It's good. The job is done, and we can go home now." Maybe the 2-time MVP just wants to hang out with his horses instead.
The Nuggets finished the playoffs with an overall playoff record of 16-4, placing them alongside the "2017 Golden State Warriors (16-1) and 2007 San Antonio Spurs (16-4) as the only champions to lose fewer than five playoff games since 2003," as stated by Yahoo! Sports.
Nuggets coach Michael Malone has high hopes for the future of this Nuggets team. "Pat Riley said something many years ago," Michael Malone explained, as reported by ESPN. "I used to have it up on my board when I was a head coach in Sacramento, and I talked about the evolution in this game and how you go from a nobody to an upstart, and you go from an upstart to a winner, and a winner to a contender, and a contender to a champion, and the last step after a champion, is to be a dynasty."
To those worried about betting, the Nuggets sit at the best odds to win the 2024 title, at +475 odds.
Comentários